Leggo My Ego

Poker is a game of egos.

Why else would Phil Hellmuth routinely insult other players, make a grand entrance at the 2010 World Series Main Event dressed as an MMA fighter, or go on a curse-filled rant after losing over $100,000 to amateur David Fishman on PokerStars.net's The Big Game?

Consider the primary objective of the game as well: to acquire the largest stack, which equals power at the poker table. And what does the person with the biggest stack usually do? He uses this power to control the game and bully the other players at every opportunity.

It's also a game dominated by men (battling one another for the control over the size of their...stacks) in which the best possible hand is referred to as the nuts.

Acquiring the largest stack brings about a feeling of great satisfaction, as making money often does, because it provides validation, which feeds the ego. Conversely, losing can agitate the ego by making us feel inadequate, causing us to go on tilt or start steaming. This happens to me all the time.

I get very upset when I lose a lot of chips or bust out of a tournament, which happened to me right before I began this post. This reaction usually stems from arrogance because I like to think I'm a pretty good player. Incidentally, overestimating one's abilities is the most common mistakes made by beginners (and my professional aspirations were only born about six weeks ago).

I know it sounds silly, but sometimes I get so mad I'll even continue insisting that I'm still better player than the guy who just eliminated me, rants my fiancée describes as "extremely unattractive."

The funny thing is, I'm completely aware of all this while this is happening. Intellectually, I know this anger is pointless and ego-driven, but my emotions nonetheless manage to get the best of me. It's almost as if I'm watching someone else controlling my actions and I am helpless to stop them.

I am the ego's puppet.

This is not the case, of course, because we choose our emotions and reactions regardless of the situation. For example, when someone cuts us off on the road, we choose to feel annoyed; that person does not annoy us. No one else has the power to make us feel anything.

At this point you may be wondering why I choose to continue playing a game that gets me so riled up. Well, I've never been a 9-5 kind of guy and I've been playing cards all my life (cribbage, rummy, spades, hearts; penny ante five card draw with my sister at age ten using the money in our piggy banks; I even played dollar point/dollar set pitch for extra cash throughout high school) so I'm fairly certain I can eventually make a living at it, but there's an even better reason.

The life of a professional poker player is enticing--money, fame, travel, excitement--and I wholeheartedly believe that life should be lived to the fullest. However, I also believe the most important aspect of the human experience is learning to transcend the ego, and those moments in which we experience discomfort (from a minor annoyance to something as dramatic as losing a loved one) are opportunities to do just that.

Our natural state of being is love and anytime we're angry, sad, annoyed, upset, or scared (all of which are rooted in fear), we've lost touch with our natural state of being. The ultimate goal is to reach a level of enlightenment in which nothing that happens in this world can affect us and reclaim the puppet strings from the ego. Teachers like Jesus and Buddha understood this.

Granted, that level of enlightenment seems almost unattainable. The good news is we've been at it for several lifetimes already, and every time we experience discomfort is another opportunity to internalize this crucial lesson. All we need is a willingness to learn and the awareness to realize what is happening during these situations.

In that sense, poker may prove to be my salvation.